Impact of ICT on the productivity of the firm: evidence from Turkish manufacturing

This paper aims to explore the impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) on labor productivity growth in Turkish manufacturing. This is the first attempt at exploring the impact of ICT on productivity in Turkish manufacturing at the firm level. The analysis is based on firm level data obtained from Turkish Statistical Institute (TURKSTAT) and covers the period from 2003 to 2012. The data used in the analysis includes all firms employing 19+ workers in Turkish manufacturing industry. Growth accounting results show that the contributions of conventional and ICT capital to value added growth are not significantly different from each other. On the other hand, results based both on static (fixed-effects) and dynamic panel data analysis highlight the positive influence on firms’ productivity exerted by ICT capital. The findings show that the impact of ICT capital on productivity is larger by about 25 to 50% than that of conventional capital. This contribution of ICT capital is higher than that of non-ICT capital for small sized and low-tech firms. Our findings imply that investing in ICT capital increases firm productivity by increasing the productivity of labor and also that convention growth accounting approaches may not be adequate to identify such linkages.     

Does Peacetime Military Service Affect Crime?

Draft lottery data combined with Danish longitudinal administrative records show that military service can reduce criminal activity for youth offenders. For this group, property crime is reduced, and our results indicate that the effect is unlikely to be the result of incapacitation only. We find no effect of military service on violent crime, on educational attainment, or on employment and earnings, either in the short run or in the long run. These results suggest that military service does not upgrade productive human capital directly, but rather affects criminal activity through other channels (e.g., by changing attitudes to criminal activity).     

The art of retaining seasonal employees: three industry-specific leadership styles

The majority of leadership studies have centered on various leadership approaches, but there is limited research that has focused on seasonal employee leadership (SEL) in the hospitality literature. Hence, there is a need to develop a new leadership model which could help to understand how to retain seasonal employees in the hospitality industry. This study divided seasonal employees into three types by using semi-structured interviews and document analysis. These are suspended employees (Type-A), seasonal trainee (Type-B), and spoon-feeding employees (Type-C). Three different leadership styles were developed according to each type of seasonal employees; suspending leadership for type A, mentor leadership for type B, and spoon-feeding leadership for type C. The study makes an important contribution to the leadership literature by aligning employee types with different leadership styles in the hospitality industry.     

Set-valued solution concepts using interval-type payoffs for interval games

Uncertainty is a daily presence in the real world. It affects our decision making and may have influence on cooperation. Often uncertainty is so severe that we can only predict some upper and lower bounds for the outcome of our actions, i.e., payoffs lie in some intervals. A suitable game theoretic model to support decision making in collaborative situations with interval data is that of cooperative interval games. Solution concepts that associate with each cooperative interval game sets of interval allocations with appealing properties provide a natural way to capture the uncertainty of coalition values into the players’ payoffs. In this paper, some set-valued solution concepts using interval payoffs, namely the interval core, the interval dominance core and the interval stable sets for cooperative interval games, are introduced and studied. The main results contained in the paper are a necessary and sufficient condition for the non-emptiness of the interval core of a cooperative interval game and the relations between the interval core, the interval dominance core and the interval stable sets of such a game.     

Love my selfie: selfies in managing impressions on social networks

This study aims to provide insights on personal branding and impression management practices in the context of selfie production and sharing on online social networking sites (oSNSs). The theoretical framework of the study was constructed according to Goffman’s ‘Dramaturgy Theory’ and Belk’s ‘Digital Extended Self’ theory. Four constructs; de-materialization of photography, co-construction of the self, sharing economy of digital media and online social networks, and distributed memory were included in the study. The results of the literature review were further explained according to the production and consumption of selfies. This study provides detailed information about how selfies can be used as a mediator for purposes of self-extension and personal branding. Even though selfies are seen as an everyday activity and a raw presentation of the subject, they also include extra contextual information about the subject. The results of the study exert that selfies shared online can be used as a tool for impression management in oSNSs.     

Structure and Governance in Industrial Districts: Implications for Competitive Advantage

The existing research on industrial districts is fragmented, and yields conflicting advice for managers about the benefits and costs of locating in an industrial district. We resolve much of this ambiguity by synthesizing and integrating the existing research, and developing a typology of districts based on the continuous dimensions of need for coordination and centralization of control. In so doing, we elucidate why different types of industrial districts have different structures, and different competitive implications. We introduce four archetypes of industrial districts (based on extreme values of our two dimensions), and for each we discuss the benefits and costs of locating in the district, the sources of competitive advantage for members of the district vis‐à‐vis non‐members, and the sources of competitive advantage a district firm may gain over other members of the same district.     

A framework for the analysis of global, regional and local business networks

In this article we are dealing with the global, regional and local questions of the business. We raise the following question: is there a relation between network management (networking) and the spatial type of the network. We make a cross analysis of networking and spatial types of the network. The paper builds on the model of networking (Ford et al., 2002; Ford et al., 2003; Håkansson et al., 2009), the network paradoxes (Håkansson and Ford, 2002) and the model of 6 Cs (Ritter & Ford, 2006). We emphasize the strategic importance of the interpretation of network pictures. In order to answer the research question we create a theoretical conceptual frame called the Spatial Networking Matrix. We use the method of explorative expert interview in order to introduce some experiences of company leaders and managers concerning networking and spatiality. We conclude that after further development, the Spatial Networking Matrix can help to analyze networking and spatial types of networks at once, deepen the understanding of the real business world and through all of these, be a useful tool for business practice.     

THE LEGACY AND CHALLENGE OF FISCAL POLICY IN SUB‐SAHARAN AFRICA1

This paper traces salient aspects of the evolution of fiscal policy in sub‐Saharan Africa since 1960 and highlights the need for further reforms to consolidate the gains of the recent past. The fiscal position of the sub‐Saharan African region as a whole has improved markedly during the past ten years, but most countries still face formidable fiscal challenges. To consolidate the progress made during the past decade and to tackle the remaining problems, sub‐Saharan African policymakers should remain firmly committed to sound fiscal policies.     

Sealed bid auctions with ambiguity: Theory and experiments

This study presents a laboratory experiment of the first and second price sealed bid auctions with independent private values, where the distribution of bidder valuations may be unknown. In our experimental setting, in first price auctions, bids are lower with the presence of ambiguity. This result is consistent with ambiguity loving in a model that allows for different ambiguity attitudes. We also find that the first price auction generates significantly higher revenue than the second price auction with and without ambiguity.     

On Combining Partial and Incompatible Information in E-negotiation and E-arbitration

The complexity of the problems to be addressed in an e-democracy framework and the variety of involved stakeholders, with different backgrounds, views and access to information sources, lead us to consider the case in which an e-negotiation should be performed among subjects who have partial, sometimes incompatible, information and can hardly gather to discuss issues together, under the supervision of a facilitator. We propose a statistical method which addresses the issue of partial and incompatible information, merging it and then using it to get a final decision, possibly in an automatic way, through processes of e-negotiation and e-arbitration.